The cup of national iniquity was full, and its baleful contents overflowed in a devastating flood. "In the gates of the land"--the point on the north-west frontier where the armies met--Iahvah "winnowed His people with a fan," separating those who were doomed to fall from those who were to survive, as the winnowing fan separates the chaff from the wheat in the threshing-floor. There He "bereaved" the nation of their dearest hope, "the breath of their nostrils, the Lord's Anointed" (Lam. iv. 20); there He multiplied their widows. And after the lost battle He brought the victor in hot haste against the "Mother" of the fallen warriors, the ill-fated city, Jerusalem, to wreak vengeance upon her for her ill-timed opposition. But, for all this bitter fruit of their evil doings, the people "turned not back from their own ways"; and therefore the strophe of lamentation closes with a threat of utter extermination: "Their remnant"--the poor survival of these fierce storms--"Their remnant will I give to the sword before their foes."[62] If the thirteenth and fourteenth verses be not a mere interpolation in this chapter (see xvii. 3, 4), their proper place would seem to be here, as continuing and amplifying the sentence upon the residue of the people. The text is unquestionably corrupt, and must be amended by help of the other passage, where it is partially repeated. The twelfth verse may be read thus: "Thy wealth and thy treasures will I make a prey, For the sin of thine high places in all thy borders."[63] Then the fourteenth verse follows, naturally enough, with an announcement of the Exile: "And I will enthral thee to thy foes In a land thou knowest not: 'For a fire is kindled in Mine anger,' That shall burn for evermore!"[64] The prophet has now fulfilled his function of judge by pronouncing upon his people the extreme penalty of the law. His strong perception of the national guilt and of the righteousness of God has left him no choice in the matter. But how little this duty of condemnation accorded with his own individual feeling as a man and a citizen is clear from the passionate outbreak of the succeeding strophe. "Woe's me, my mother," he exclaims, "that thou barest me, A man of strife and a man of contention to all the country! Neither lender nor borrower have I been; Yet all of them do curse me." A desperately bitter tone, evincing the anguish of a man wounded to the heart by the sense of fruitless endeavour and unjust hatred. He had done his utmost to save his country, and his reward was universal detestation. His innocence and integrity were requited with the odium of the pitiless creditor who enslaves his helpless victim, and appropriates his all; or the fraudulent borrower who repays a too ready confidence with ruin.[65] The next two verses answer this burst of grief and despair: